


night comes on

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Character Death, Domesticity, Drift Compatibility, F/F, Female Relationships, Gen, Grief, Horseback Riding, Mentorship, Mortality, Nile In Leadership, Not Italian Abuse, Post-Canon, Self-Sacrifice, Team as Family, cremation, faith - Freeform, italics abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:54:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25717642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: On her layover in Munich, she stops in the ladies’. She’s washing her hands when someone pulls up at the next sink, and says, “Corporal Freeman?”Forcing herself to breathe slow, raise her head slow, she looks. The sight of desert camo takes her right out of the bathroom, back to the heat and the buzz of flies swarming to her own blood.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache the Scythian & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Nile Freeman/Original Female Character, Nile Freeman/being respected
Comments: 94
Kudos: 402





	night comes on

**Author's Note:**

> Andy dies in this one. I'm spoiling it up front so folks can nope out now. <3
> 
> Suggested listening is here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7vpCGk1zD9lU8qzVJ6cVHu?si=_g0x-rJEQFugfXRs0XScIA

In hindsight, this is exactly why they don’t fly commercial. 

It’s the fastest way back to France, though, and Copley arranged this so Nile will make it in time for the job he found. She planned to stay another two months in Gaziantep, but it is what it is. Safiye understood. This isn’t the first time Nile had to leave for business and couldn’t say when she’d be back. 

On her layover in Munich, she stops in the ladies’. She’s washing her hands when someone pulls up at the next sink, and says, “Corporal Freeman?” 

Forcing herself to breathe slow, raise her head slow, she looks. The sight of desert camo takes her right out of the bathroom, back to the heat and the buzz of flies swarming to her own blood. 

She blinks Dizzy’s horrified face away, and studies the woman who’s actually here. Red hair under her cap, freckles all over her narrow pale face. A downward tilt to the corners of her mouth, and something about her brown eyes that Nile can’t place. 

“Holy shit,” the woman says. The name on her fatigues is Neuberg. “You probably don’t remember me, but I was stationed at Helmand too. We always wondered where you ended up.” 

Nile does not remember her. “I was transferred,” she says through a dry throat, “to Special Ops.” 

Neuberg nods. “Makes sense--turned out you were pretty special. I guess you’re not a corporal anymore.” 

“No,” Nile agrees, and offers nothing else. 

“Well.” Neuberg salutes, a little brisk maybe. “I’ll let you get back to it.” She goes into a stall, looking back once before the door shuts. 

The sink, with its motion sensor, long since shut off. Nile waves her hand and rinses the rest of the soap. 

Out in the terminal, in the space between two vending machines, she takes off her jacket and fishes a satin-lined beanie out of her backpack. She pulls it on and tucks up her braids. 

_recognized at MUC terminal 2, bathroom by H31,_ she texts Copley on the way to her gate. _USMC record for Neuberg? private tops, ginger, brown eyes_

He replies four minutes later when Nile is sitting on the floor by the gate, her back to the window even though there are plenty of open seats. _Corporal Neuberg is stationed at Panzer Kaserne. Give me 15 for security footage._

She will not bounce her leg or chew her knuckles. She will _not_. She scrolls a pretend Facebook feed, refreshing the bland smile on her face every couple minutes, until they call her group. 

In line she looks over her shoulder but sees no red hair or desert camo. Just before turning the bend in the boarding bridge she checks again; still clear. 

When her backpack is stowed and her seatbelt is buckled, she can’t help it--she looks back through the gap in the seats, and finds only a round German six-year-old on a beach vacation. 

Well after the flight attendant told everyone to turn their phones off, Nile’s buzzes. 

_Is this her?_ Attached is a low-res screenshot of Neuberg leaving the restroom. She didn’t change out of her fatigues, and that’s what finally brings Nile a step down from high alert. 

_yes!_

_I’ll keep an eye on her._

_thanks Copley_

The plane is taxiing now, and she’s about to switch to airplane mode when he asks, _Should I tell the others?_

As she thinks about it, the kid starts kicking the back of Nile’s seat. 

If Copley tells them, they’ll mobilize before her flight lands. They’ll all come pick her up and drive across the border to the Delta safehouse, and put off Copley’s job to deal with this. It will be weeks of waiting, off the grid and away from any action. And for what?

A shark, she realizes, studying Neuberg’s face in the screenshot. She’s seen eyes like that in sharks, flat and dead. 

_no,_ she types at last. _shitty coincidence, that’s all_

Nile shuts her phone off. The flight to Nice isn’t long enough for a movie or even a meal, but when the flight attendants come by, she orders a bloody Mary. 

She’s been unkillable for five years, four months, and twenty-five days. She’s been on thirty-odd jobs, depending on how you count the situations they don’t exactly plan for, and she has died… maybe fifteen times, depending on how you count the ones when she didn’t lose consciousness before healing. 

She met Safiye two years ago, doing aid work in a refugee camp where the team escorted a caravan across the border. It’s flexible, what they have, if not what Nile would call casual. She was too far gone after one look in Safiye’s eyes to be casual about it. It may be a mistake. (In the long view, it’s probably a mistake.) But there are a lot of ways to live in this world, and it would be a waste to spend a life as long as hers will be without loving someone for a little while. 

The others haven’t said shit about it, and she’s grateful for that much. After the escort job, Nicky told her he and Joe adopted orphans a few times over the last millennium. It used to be that they could settle in a place for decades at a stretch. Maybe it will be that way again someday. 

But just because they didn’t have the means to hear about an atrocity halfway across the world back then, doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening. Nile rejects the idea of a straight-line trajectory of human progress, be it for the better or not; she’s heard too many stories from Andy. 

Andy is the one waiting for her in the pickup lane. She’s driving the same stick shift they bought used when they arrived in Sainte-Agnès. Her big trenchcoat is in the back seat. 

Nile managed to make it off her plane and into the main terminal before she looked behind her again. She does it once more now, just before opening the car door. 

There’s nothing, of course. 

Nile drops into the passenger seat, and Andy says, “How’s your lady?”

“She’s good,” Nile says. “Defending her thesis next month.” 

From the front pocket of her backpack she takes the baklava, in a plastic container she bought specifically so it wouldn’t crumble in transit. She sets it on the dashboard. 

Andy gives her a swift flashing grin--and then looks at her a little longer. “What?” Nile says. 

“You were drinking?” 

“Don’t judge me.” She isn’t, though; she’s just being Andy, noticing everything, including the vodka on Nile’s breath. “Planes have never been the same since we met.”

Andy shrugs and looks back at the road. She’s been letting her hair grow out for a few months. It’s just long enough to tie back now, and Nile recognizes the hair band from her own stash. 

“So what’s the job?” Nile says. 

“The details should be in by this evening. It’s a lab outside of Ghent--chemical weapons, nasty shit. They’ve been finalizing contracts with a few different factions for something that’s still in development.”

“Sounds like we can scorch the earth.”

“And salt it,” Andy says, with relish. “Wheels up tomorrow morning.”

“What did you get up to while I was gone?” 

“Vegetable garden.”

“No shit?”

“Nicky wanted zucchini. Do you have any idea how fast zucchini takes over? I planted other things, but it’s all zucchini now.” Nile snickers, and they fall into a comfortable silence. She watches the road ascend and the French Riviera glide past. 

Nobody comes out to greet them when they walk through the gate in the stone wall, past the garden bed and into the house. Inside there’s a vase on the dining table full of the stout little wildflowers that grow in the mountains, and a slip of paper that says, in Joe’s fluid calligraphy, “Welcome home, Nile,” on one side, and, “We went to get food,” on the other. 

Not much else has changed in the living room except maybe a few more books on top of the inadequate bookcase. The mantle clock isn’t ticking--no one winds it when she’s away. Nile’s favorite chair calls, but the shower calls louder. 

“I’ll be outside,” Andy says, and Nile waves her on. She dumps her backpack on the table. In her room, where the bedding is freshly washed, she gets a change of clothes from the Probably Won’t Get Shot Tonight selection on the right hand side of the armoire. 

The water heater was installed around ‘47 most likely, and when Nile opens the tap it rattles valiantly for an eon before it’s warm enough to get under the spray. 

She washes, towels off, and dresses inside of ten minutes, despite how hard she’s been working to enjoy showers now that she doesn’t have to share them with her whole rifle squad. Again she has to push away the image of desert camo and the buzz of those damn flies, the memory of the first life she took. She thinks instead about the shower she had yesterday in Safiye’s tiny apartment with the beautiful tile bath. She thinks about Safiye stepping inside it with her. 

After she’s dressed, she drags a brocade footstool to the fireplace and stands on top of it to reach the clock. Its winding key is nearly buried in dust already. Maybe the others don’t care for the ticking, or the chime every quarter hour. The mainspring is still good, and it comes to life as she twists the key. 

She has to set the time, too. Her watch is in the pile of her dirty clothes, so she turns off airplane mode to let her phone update to the time zone. 

It buzzes in her hand with everything that came in during the flight, and the notifications fill up the screen over the photo of her mother and brother. An email from Copley, following up on a job from eight months ago. Weekly screen time report. Siri suggestion: Read today’s news articles. This iPhone hasn’t been backed up in 140 weeks. 

A text from an 0711 phone code. One sentence, four words. 

_Does your family know?_

“Nile?” Nicky calls from the door. Nile clears the notifications and shoves her phone back in her pocket. “Hey,” she says, and steps down from the footstool to hug him. She clings maybe a little tighter than usual, a little longer than is warranted after six weeks away. 

Joe sets down the groceries and puts his arms around both of them. He breathes in deep, lets out a sigh over Nile’s shoulder. “Ah, laurel. She is perfumed like the conquering hero.”

It’s the last traces of Safiye’s soap. “I brought you a present,” Nile tells him. 

Nicky immediately ducks out of the hug and goes to search her backpack. 

“You fucker--”

Joe holds her back. They scuffle, not particularly seriously, until Nicky crows, “Oho yes, I don’t care if this isn’t what you got us.” He comes up with two bags of coffee, which is in fact what she got them, and he whisks those and the grocery bag away to the kitchen. “Thanks Nile!” 

Nile huffs, and swats Joe one more time. He lets go of her, grinning. “It’s 1638, by the way.”

She sobers and puts her hand on Joe’s shoulder. “I don’t know how to tell you this, man, but it’s 2025.”

He makes a face at Nile and gestures to the mantle. This damn show-off isn’t even wearing a watch, but Nile supposes that when she’s a thousand, she’ll be able to tell time by the sun, too. “Thanks,” she says, and she finishes setting the clock. 

She sits for a while in the wingback by the fireplace, with the sound of the clock to one side and the sound of cooking on the other. Her fingertips drum on the back of her phone in no particular rhythm. 

Copley ported her number years ago, in the process of closing out her accounts. Anyone who can get that can get her mom’s number, or her brother’s. They can get their address and apartment number. That’s a painfully easy thing in this century. 

To warn them would be to reveal herself. Nile has been officially MIA since the day after Andy found her. Maybe it’s cruel, to leave it that way for five years. But for there to be hope, there has to be doubt. 

The clock chimes at 1645, and again at the top of the hour, before Andy hauls in a basket. She chucks firewood into the hearth, grey and twisted fragments of fallen branches. It’s late summer verging on autumn and the nights have just started to take on a chill in the breeze, but Nile has watched Andy stoke fires in the middle of July; it isn’t the warmth she finds a comfort. 

Wordlessly and with only one glance at Nile, Andy takes the basket to the kitchen. Nile hears Nicky’s soft “Grazie” a moment later. 

Joe emerges from the hallway in workout clothes, and shoves a rolled up sticky mat at her. “Do some yoga with me.” 

She isn’t in the mood at all, but that’s usually the best time to do it. “This mat’s older than you.”

“You are extremely funny.”

Nile gets changed and joins him on the flagstone patio where the shadows are getting long. The poses feel good, after the plane and the way she held herself in the chair. And she can almost do a handstand without the wall now. After an hour, everything feels looser except her face. Only a titanic effort keeps that neutral. 

Andy appears at the back door. “Food,” she announces.

It’s a good thing they did yoga before dinner and not after, because there’s gnocchi from scratch and a cream sauce with peas and red pepper flakes. And of course the zucchini spears: an entire cookie sheet worth of them, crusted with parsley and asiago and at least a clove of garlic each, which still manages to not be enough. And pan fried zucchini blossoms, stuffed with ricotta. And a baguette. And a sprout salad with cherry tomatoes and balsamic vinaigrette, heavy on the olive oil. And a bottle of Côtes du Rhône. 

Nile is never moving away from this part of the world. Yes, she could eat this well anywhere, or at least anywhere Nicky is. But to look up from a meal like this and see the mountains out one window and the sea out the other--that’s the complete package. 

She’s grown used to the dinnertime silence, born of too many interrupted meals and too few opportunities to cook lavishly. It’s broken only by the occasional grunt of satisfaction with the food. 

They are each an island in a shared experience. Sometimes Andy’s eyelids flutter closed, and Nile wonders which combination of flavors unearthed a millennia-old memory. Joe keeps one hand on the back of Nicky’s chair at all times. Nicky catches Nile looking once, and smiles in the quick, small way he has. 

“I’ve got dishes,” Nile says when they’re finished. This way she won’t have to face them for a while. The others make no protest; they stack their plates on hers. 

Nile fills one half of the double sink. If some nobody Marine stationed in Stuttgart can find her number, she can find Nile’s mom and brother. If she’s depraved enough to make threats, she’s probably capable of more. It would be reckless not to assume she’s capable of more, and act accordingly. 

Nile turns her impotent frustration toward scraping the cast iron. 

When everything is in the rack, Nile gets a towel and leans in the doorway to the living room, drying her hands. Andy sits sidewise in her chair, taking tiny savoring bites of baklava as she watches the fire. She is a portrait all in orange. Joe and Nicky are on the settee with an episode of _Deep Space Nine_ pulled up from Copley’s media server. 

If she told any of them about Neuberg, it would end up being all of them, of course. And then if Neuberg found them and killed one of them and it didn’t take--or worse, if she shot at Andy and one of them took the bullet as they are so practiced now at doing, and if all of that got out… 

They have one shitty superpower between them, and somehow it makes them all so _fragile_. 

Nile steps back into the kitchen, out of sight. 

_what do you want?_ she texts Neuberg. 

The reply is almost immediate. First, a set of coordinates. Then, _9/18, 2200. Come alone_

Three days. She leaves Neuberg on read. A thumbs-up emoji seems inappropriate. 

“Intel’s in,” Andy calls. Nile goes to join them. 

* * *

The job in Ghent ought to be a cakewalk. Instead, Nile dies twice. 

The second time, she wakes on the floor of someone’s office. The first thing she notices is that this particular potential accomplice to war crimes keeps an amigurumi Baby Yoda on their desk. The rest of the decor is sterile and slate grey, like the facility around it. A shitty place to die, no matter how temporary. She needs to quit it. 

Andy crouches over her. Through the gas mask, her gaze burns. “What is your problem?”

“Sorry,” Nile mutters. “I’m out of it.” 

As she struggles to sit up, her forehead rejects the bullet with the bizarre puckering sensation she hasn’t quite gotten used to. The lead plinks down into her gas mask. Nile pulls it off her face, shakes the bullet out, wipes blood from inside the lenses, and patches the hole with gaffer’s tape. 

“Get back in it,” Andy says. World’s best motivational speaker, six millennia and counting. “I’m supposed to be the only liability here.”

“You’re not a liability,” Nile tells her, securing the mask again. Andy wears body armor on every job, lets Nicky lead in the marching order and lets Joe breach a room first and lets Nile cover her, always. She does everything right. And Nile’s distraction not only jeopardizes the job, it means Andy might not be covered when she needs it. 

Nile gives the thumbs up, and Andy yanks her to her feet. They join Joe and Nicky at the door and, as one, break through the standoff. 

The security detail is there to guard against corporate espionage and against those who can’t afford to be the highest bidder. They expect people to steal their research and prototypes and backups; they don’t expect someone who is highly motivated to ensure that no one at all possesses these things. 

This is the sort of job for which Copley maintains a side account with a percentage of the take from all their hired work--so they can cover the expenses themselves. The other work is fulfilling, but nothing quite compares to doing it for the rush when it is theirs alone, when only five people in the world will ever know. 

Tonight’s attack, which will leave nothing salvageable in the lab, is concurrent with a catastrophic failure at the off-site server bank. What a shame. 

There is a lot of uncertainty in Nile’s life. How long they’ll get to stay in one place before Copley says it’s time to relocate. How much pain she’ll suffer in a given day. The bigger _how_ of it all, the reason they’re like this, if not the _why_ and the purpose. The question, always in the back of her mind, of whether there will come a day in two or three centuries when her moral compass will stray. This life does not come with insights and epiphanies; Andy is living proof of that. 

But here is something she never questions: that when she swings her baton to turn the barrel of a guard’s rifle away from her, Nicky will finish him off with his sword. That when she passes the fallen rifle over her shoulder, Andy will be waiting for it. That when Andy kneels to reload and Nile takes the bullet that would have gone into Andy’s skull, Joe will kill the guard who shot it. 

That these bastards killed Nile twice, and she shouldn’t feel too bad about killing them right back. 

In between planting charges in the archive and the clean room, Nile and Andy and Joe and Nicky smash everything they can reach, and shoot holes in the things they can’t. It is positively gleeful. It does as much, if not more, for her state of mind as yoga. She’s going to sleep so well on the helicopter ride home. 

They climb up the elevator shaft, back to ground level, and move half a klick into the trees before detonating the charges. The ground shudders under Nile’s boots. A gout of smoke and flame emerges from the outbuilding that conceals the elevator, but it dies fast. 

Nicky waves them out, on to the long march. After a couple klicks, Andy says quietly, “It happens to all of us. You get one per decade.” 

“Great, I can’t wait for next time,” Nile deadpans. Dawn is about to break over the hills. “What happens when your turn comes around?” 

“That’s why I have you,” Andy says. 

Nile reaches out to shove her. Andy leans just enough that Nile’s hand goes wide, and then she traps Nile’s arm and turns. It’s a move that should swing Nile forward so Andy can jab at her throat or her kidney or some other excruciating place, but Nile has seen her do it too many times. She braces her front foot and centers her weight over the back one. 

Her shoulder dislocates, and that’s just awful. It takes everything Nile has to not scream, even after five years of embracing the pain. But now Andy is three quarters turned away from her, and Nile shifts to her front foot and kicks the back of Andy’s knee. She follows that with her forearm beneath Andy’s shoulderblades. 

She almost feels bad about it, but the guilt is overpowered by astonishment, and… yeah, that’s definitely pride. Andy is on one knee in the dirt, trying not to cough, and all it cost Nile was an arm. 

They hear the sound just before Nicky puts a hand up. Nile drops into a crouch beside Andy, rifle in her good hand. They wait, unbreathing, until they hear it again, faint through the trees: a whinny. 

“Boss,” Joe says softly. 

Andy looks up at him and nods, and Nile watches the outrage in her eyes fade to eagerness. Nile helps her up, and Andy smacks her back, none too gentle. Nicky leads, turning north. Andy follows. 

“Could you help me out here?” Nile says. 

“I gotcha.” Joe puts one arm across her shoulders, locks his other hand around it, and squeezes until Nile’s shoulder pops back in. It hurts like fuck, again, but it takes a little less time than letting her body fix itself. “Was that worth it?” Joe asks as he sets her down. 

The pain fades and the endorphins take over, and Nile gives him a grin. “One hundred percent.”

They follow the others north. Half a kilometer later they find the stable, on a little plateau carved out of the hillside, quickly filling with sunlight. “Check the house,” Andy says, and Joe goes off through the trees, the long way around. 

Nicky sets up his thermal scope on a monopod and turns it toward the stable. “I count four.”

“How about that,” says Andy, smiling for the first time all night. 

“Oh my God,” Nile mutters. They both turn to look at her. “Is this a twelfth-century joyride? Is that what we’re doing? Grand theft equine?”

“We’re not keeping them,” Nicky says, visibly affronted. “They’ll find their way home.”

“Do you ride?” Andy asks, like it just occurred to her. 

“It’s been a minute,” Nile admits. Not since the handful of months she spent on an aircraft carrier, the shore leave in Australia. And it’s not that she learned how to ride there, but more that the guide plonked a helmet on her head and smacked the horse’s rump, and if she fell off, at least she fell on the beach. 

She can almost hear Jay and Dizzy laughing at her. 

“Go easy on the reins,” Andy tells her. “Use your legs to hold on.”

Nile waits, but Andy doesn’t offer anything more. “That’s it?” Surely she was there when horses were domesticated. She must have logged a couple million… saddle… hours. 

Andy looks her in the eyes. “You have to feel it, Nile.”

Joe calls the all-clear, and they cross open ground to join him at the stable. “Weekend trip,” he surmises, holding the padlock away from the stable door so Nile can pick it. 

The horses snort as the door swings open. The others empty the tack closet in a businesslike fashion, but Nile turns to the dapple grey mare in the first stall. “Hey,” she says. She opens a feed tub and offers a mound of oats. “Let’s make a deal. I’ll feel you, and you feel me, and we’ll both get home.”

The mare considers her by sight and by scent. With astonishing gentleness, she takes the oats from Nile’s open palm. 

Nicky shows her how to fit the bit and tie the cinch strap and balance the load in the saddle bags. Nile guides the mare out of her stall, and mounts up without making a fool of herself. It’s a very tolerant animal, even when she is, predictably, too tight on the reins at first. 

As soon as they’re clear of the stable, Joe whoops loud enough to echo off the hillside and kicks his horse into a gallop. Andy follows, silent and javelin-swift. 

“Children,” Nicky tuts, but Nile knows damn well he’s only hanging back for her sake. 

When she clucks her tongue, the mare trots into the half-light of the woods, following a trail Nile can’t see from this far up. When the land dips, Nile leans back with her arm straight to keep slack on the reins. The feel of the horse’s side against her calf turns, gradually, from something foreign to a reassurance. 

Nicky whistles jauntily as they go, and when Nile hears a countermelody from Joe to the left, she does something terrifying: she gently tugs the reins. The mare snorts, but she turns off the trail and threads through the trees without incident, bringing Nile to where Andy and Joe sit their saddles like they were born there. 

They fall back into their marching order, Nicky then Andy then Nile then Joe, and they have to steer out of the densest parts of the forest and climb a ridge because Nicky’s horse keeps biting branches and letting them whip back into his face. Nile, holding her breath against laughter until tears stream down her cheeks, leans forward on the uphill to pat her mare for not being a shithead. 

This could, give or take the synthetic fabric and digital watches and the contents of their saddlebags, be almost any century. For a little while they exist outside of time and context, four renegades, outlaws, highwaymen, partisans, lonesome and very quarrelsome heroes, archetypes with nothing in this world but their weapons and each other. Four anonymous silhouettes in a landscape painting that can only be dated by the lifespan of its artist. Nile can place herself there among them like it’s a memory, like this tableau stretches forward and backward to infinity. 

And then they’ve gone ten klicks and they’re back at the knob hill where Wei’s chopper left them, and they send the horses off after giving them handfuls of wild strawberries. Nile hoists her pack again and watches Joe kiss his horse tenderly between the eyes and call it lovely names, and when at last it disappears into the woods, the moment ends and she’s firmly back in 2025. 

Two days now. 

When she is home and showered, after Andy says she’s going out and she’ll be back tomorrow, and after Joe and Nicky say goodnight, Nile checks her phone. 

_Neuberg’s ID was scanned when she crossed the border into France with a group,_ Copley says. _Action?_

As if this doesn’t just strengthen her resolve. Whatever happens, whatever it takes, Neuberg won’t get within reach of either one of her families. 

_no,_ Nile tells Copley. _I’ve got this._

* * *

Andy rolls back in, looking windswept and distant, when they’re finishing lunch the next day. She helps herself to the last open-faced sandwich. “Tell us you didn’t buy a horse, boss,” Nicky greets her. 

“I didn’t buy a horse,” she says with her mouth full. 

Joe snaps his fingers. “That's retirement, right there. You could get maybe a hundred acres in the hills somewhere. Ride all you want.”

Andy looks at him, and chews, and says nothing. 

“I thought maybe goats,” Nicky offers. 

“Cheese, cheese, all you think about is cheese.”

“I think about other things. Like soap.”

Andy waves a hand in front of Nile’s face, and she straightens up. “You want to get out of here?” Andy says. 

The sun is high and punishing, like they’re getting closer to it in a meaningful way the more the road climbs upward. This would be prime siesta time, lounging in the shade with a full stomach until they start on dinner, but Nile already spent most of the morning in bed. “Any word from Quynh?”

Andy shakes her head, a cypher behind a pair of shades. 

“What about your other girlfriend?”

“She’s not my--” Andy catches herself. “Celeste is fine.”

Nile grins. It’s too damn easy. 

Andy finds a spot to pull off with a good view all the way down to the coast. They get out and lean on the car while Andy finishes her sandwich. 

“Talked to Copley,” Andy says. 

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_. “Yeah?” Nile says, real casual-like. 

“Yeah.” She breathes in, lets it out. “He thinks it’s time to let Wei go.”

Oh. “What did you tell him?”

Andy turns to fix her with a stare. “I told him I’d talk it over with you.”

Nile forces herself to hold Andy’s gaze through a sharp pang of guilt. She _is_ doing the right thing. She turns back to the view. “Guess he must have candidates.”

“Binders full.”

Wei has been with them longer than Nile. He knows a lot. Enough to have suspicions, certainly. They probably should have let him go years ago, if it was ever a question of security. They could just as easily have hired a different pilot on every single job if they wanted. 

But people love habit and familiarity. That, it seems, never changes. 

Andy is watching her think. “We can phase him out slow,” Nile says. “Quiet jobs that don’t leave a smoke trail. Let him think we’re winding down.”

Andy nods. It’s no indication that she agrees, but that isn’t the point. 

By the time they get back to the house, Nicky is starting on pasta. “You want a hand?” Nile asks. 

“Onions, please,” he says. 

Even though he shocked them in cold water, her eyes sting and sting as she dices. 

Joe comes in to deposit the day’s zucchini harvest and wash garden dirt from his hands. “Andy says we’re going to taper Wei off,” he tells Nicky. “We ought to get him a present, for that time in Madrid in ‘22 when he didn’t take video and put it on YouTube.” 

“Maybe a new chopper,” Nicky says. They’ve left Wei an awful lot of bloodstains over the years, and Nicky’s guts did get all over the chopper in Madrid. 

“Whoa, big spender. I was thinking a Starbucks gift card.”

“Cheapass.” 

“Sentimentalist.”

Nicky flicks water at Joe, and some of it lands on Nile. She takes a shaky breath, clenching the knife, perhaps more theatrically than strictly necessary. “I swear _to God--_ ”

“Penitenza,” Nicky appeals, and Joe turns to face Nile and cover him. There is amusement on Joe’s face, but it can’t disguise the caution in his eyes because, at the end of the day, Nile is standing there crying and holding a knife. None of them actually enjoy being stabbed. 

For an instant she wonders if she should make them hate her. If that would be easier. If it would keep them safer. _Could_ she make them hate her, without defeating her own purpose? She only has (the clock chimes 1700) twenty-nine hours. 

“Figure out your own penitenza,” Nile mutters, and drives the tip of the knife into the cutting board. “There’s your onions.” She goes to the patio. 

She cannot make them hate her. When she returns for dinner, they do what they do every time the homesickness burdens her enough to let it show. They have set her place with flowers again, and it’s all _more wine, Nile?_ and _do you want the last scone, Nile?_ and _we thought we’d watch_ Snowpiercer _tonight, Nile._ Andy is the only one not participating in Dote On Nile Night. Joe takes Nile’s empty plate away and does the dishes. 

Nile is grateful for the fire that night, because this movie always makes her cold. Andy dozes while Joe and Nicky talk, softly and only between the dialogue, about how great they’d all be on the train--cut off an arm and it grows back eventually, it’s free cannibalism forever. Nicky waxes poetic about the eucharistic symbolism of it all, the inherent holiness of feeding people. 

She cannot make them hate her, and she loves them all so damn much. She’s _doing_ the right thing. 

* * *

Nile wakes at dawn, and no amount of moral conviction can shift the stone in her stomach. 

She winds the clock. She cooks breakfast: eggs with zucchini, bacon in a separate pan, toast with goat cheese, coffee. She watches Joe and Nicky eat. She watches Andy come out of her room with a sea bag, stuffed, over her shoulder. “Going out,” Andy reports. “I’ll be back tomorrow, maybe.” 

“Say hi to Celeste,” Nicky tells her, and Andy gives him a smile. She takes two pieces of bacon and turns to go. 

“Andy, wait.” Nile is standing now, without any memory of getting up. “Uh. Do you need me to do anything with the garden?”

Andy considers her for a long moment, gaze neutral. She puts her hand, wrapped in black leather, on Nile’s shoulder. “It’s taken care of,” she says. 

She’s through the door before Nile can begin to tell her everything. Nile watches out the window as Andy walks alone down the steep hill toward the sea. And now that she’s gone, she can’t tell Joe and Nicky. It wouldn’t be right to do this without Andy. 

“We’re heading down to the coast,” Joe says. “You want to come?”

Thank God, she’ll be alone. “No,” Nile says. “Have a good time.”

When they’re gone, she tries to do some yoga, but it turns into punch-crunches. She showers. She putters. She assembles an Almost Certainly Will Get Shot Tonight outfit in red and black so she won’t attract more attention than necessary when she stumbles away from the carnage. She does the crossword. She eats crackers. She washes the dishes from breakfast and dries them and puts them all away. 

In a fit of clear thought, she digs the ancient GPS unit out of the gear closet and pre-programs it with the coordinates, so she can stick it in the car when Joe and Nicky get back and she won’t have to bring her phone. According to the GPS, she’ll have to leave at 2040. 

She sits in her chair and listens to the clock chime, and she stares at nothing. 

Joe and Nicky come back at 1830. “It was hot and I only want salad,” Joe announces. 

Something cold does sound good. Nile could go for sushi for some reason, but Nicky thinks raw fish is a disgrace, yes that includes pesce crudo, and Nile’s not going to leave for takeaway now. She eats salad. 

She watches the half moon rise from the patio. _Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see_ , she tells herself. _Est autem fides sperandorum substantia rerum argumentum non parentum._ _Or la foi rend présentes les choses qu'on espère, et elle est une démonstration de celles qu'on ne voit point._

She makes it to 1955 before she can’t stand it anymore. It won’t hurt to be early. She walks into the house. Joe and Nicky look up from playing Go at the kitchen table, but Nile doesn’t say anything yet. She goes into her room. 

_I’m taking the car,_ she rehearses while she changes clothes. _I’m taking the car, don’t wait up._ If Andy can be blithe and explain nothing, so can Nile. 

The clock chimes, and she almost doesn’t hear her phone buzz. 

A 33 1 phone code, a number she has seen so infrequently that she does not recognize it at first. Eleven words. 

_don’t go to the rendezvous booker and i are handling it_

“Fuck,” Nile says, loudly. She hears a clatter from the kitchen, and nearly collides with Nicky in the hall. “Pack the gear. Pack the gear, it’s Andy.” 

She realizes she’s gripping his arm too tight for him to pack the gear, but then Joe pushes past them and starts tossing things from the gear closet into the hall. “Axe is gone,” he says. “What’s going on, Nile?”

“I ran into a Marine in Munich. She said she knew me from Helmand. It all checked out so I didn’t worry at first.”

No, that’s not true. The fact that Neuberg was a Marine checked out, but she never asked Copley to see if she was stationed at Helmand. What else did she fucking miss?

“Then she had my number, she texted me asking if my family knew. She told me to meet her alone tonight.” 

Nicky is staring. Nile’s going to be sick. She swallows it. 

“You didn’t tell us,” Nicky says. 

Joe grabs her shoulder. “You were _protecting_ us?”

“Do you fucking think?” she says, and he takes a step back. “But Andy--Andy found out. She looked at my phone, or, or--”

“Does it matter?” Nicky rotates out of Nile’s hold and gathers up great armfuls of stuff. “Yusuf,” he says, throwing the car keys over his shoulder, and Joe catches them one-handed without looking. 

They shove everything in the boot of the car, and peel out. Nile slumps in the front passenger seat. 

Joe is darting looks at her, and then back at the road, and back at her. “What?” she snaps. 

“If I drive any faster, we _will_ get pulled over.”

“I know,” Nile growls. 

“But I need to know where we’re going.”

She left the GPS behind. “Ah, shit!” She fumbles the phone out of her pocket.

Nicky’s hand settles on her shoulder. “Nile, let me.”

She gives him the phone, and she stares out at the tiny color-sapped world lit by the headlights. All this time she’s been feeling through what to do, and now time is thoroughly the fuck _up_ and it’s time to think. 

Nicky keeps one hand on her shoulder. “Stay on this for six miles,” he tells Joe. 

A moment later she hears him dial a number, and hears it ring out to voicemail. “What the hell Copley, are you in the bath? I sent you something to trace. I’m calling back every fifteen minutes until you pick up.”

Nile leans forward, losing Nicky’s hand, and bends her head. She should pray, but all she can string together is _Jesus God please, Jesus, God, please._

Twelve minutes and two turns later, Nile’s phone buzzes and Nicky sets it on the center console with the speaker on. Copley says, “It’s Kozak. I’m sorry. You couldn’t reach me because I was trying to warn Andy.”

Nile makes a fist and slams it down on the plastic part of her door, which has the gall to not break. “I knew I should have _fucking shot her_.”

“None of us did it,” Joe says through his teeth. “That appears to have been an oversight.”

“How did you know to tell Andy?” Nicky asks. 

“I traced Neuberg back to Dr. Kozak half an hour ago.”

“Copley,” Nile warns, as Joe and Nicky look to her. 

“Andy was here,” Copley tells her, “yesterday morning. She wanted to know what was going on with you, Nile.”

Oh _fuck_. “What did you do?” she demands. 

“I told her. You know she doesn’t ask.”

“And then what? She held you at gunpoint and made you hack my phone?” 

A silence, which she would like to believe is an embarrassed one, but it’s probably just Copley waiting for her to reach the answer on her own. “No. I’ve been monitoring Neuberg’s texts ever since you met her.”

Nile hangs up on him. She puts her hands over her face. 

They won’t forgive her for going to Copley before them. Not in a thousand years. But all Nicky says, very carefully, is, “I think if you had experienced captivity, Nile, you would not have tried to do this without the team.”

As if she could have, apparently. She meets his eyes in the rearview. “Then how do you explain Andy?”

He doesn’t look away, but he doesn’t say anything either. None of them can explain Andy. 

Copley calls back. Nicky accepts the call before Nile can throw the phone out the window. “What are we walking into?” he says. 

“She parted ways with the company,” Copley says, “and the salary Merrick paid her wouldn’t give her access to the same resources.”

“Unless she found some other billionaire to tempt with immortality,” Joe says. 

“If she had, she’d go after all you, not single out Nile.” He’s talking sense. “The coordinates are a farm outside of La Brigue. I’m sending over the most recent satellite image, from six months ago. It’ll be another forty minutes before I can get anything live, satellite or drone. I can be there myself in three hours--”

“Stay put,” Nile tells him. It comes out sounding like an order, so she adds, “Be our eyes, Copley.”

He signs off, and his text arrives: one satellite image with a barn center frame, a farmhouse to one side, and heavy machinery. “Looks like digging equipment,” Nicky says. 

“So figure a lab under the barn with access inside,” Joe says. “Eliminates the need for transport--smart. Not big enough to hold all of us though.”

“Yes big enough to hold all of us,” Nile says. 

“She’s after you, Nile. This is revenge, not profit.”

“Perché non entrambi?” Nicky mulls. 

Nile points at him. “Exactly. She gets to cut on me all day every day, but when the rest of you show up she springs the trap. That’s what Neuberg was for, to leave a trail.” 

They’re silent for a long time. The road twists almost as tightly as Nile’s guts. 

“How much security does Kozak have, you think?” Joe asks at last. 

Any number she could afford would be insultingly low. “Ten, if she really broke the bank,” says Nile. Somehow Kozak walked out of that tower, past all those bodies, and really thought she had a chance to take even one of them again. 

Nicky makes an agreeing noise. “The gas masks?” he says to Joe. 

“Packed.” Even from the front seat, Nile can feel Nicky relax a fraction. They’re all stuck in these bodies, so resilient and yet so vulnerable to all manner of things short of death. Infuriating. 

The bird’s eye view of the farm is burned behind her eyelids. “If the lab is underground, they wouldn’t have bothered doing anything fancy to the barn. We can probably just come around the back and pry planks off to get in.”

“Counterpoint,” Joe says, and as they come to a straightaway, he guns the engine. 

“Yes,” says Nicky, sharply. 

Nile grins at the thought of their little Fiat making a hole in the back wall of the barn, and in whoever’s on the other side. It’s a welcome relief from the tension she’s been holding in her jaw. She takes a deep breath and lets it out. 

Her phone buzzes. _This is live,_ says Copley’s text, _but I won’t have access for long_. Nile taps on the screencast he’s sharing. 

There are fourteen dots of light in the barn, and two by the road, and nothing in the house. Nile points to two inside the barn that aren’t in any sort of formation. “Neuberg and Kozak. And these six spaced around the back half--”

“Hiding in the animal stalls,” Nicky says. “That’s a killbox.” Even if Nile arrived early, they would have been ready for her. 

“What about the group in the open?” Joe says. 

Those six dots, and one of the loners, are slightly fainter than the rest. Like there’s an extra layer of something between them and the ground level. Nile says, “I don’t think they’re in the open.” 

“Andy and Book are moving,” Nicky says, and Nile holds the phone upright so they can both watch. 

“Talk to me,” Joe says, staring fixedly at the road. 

They’re keeping pace perfectly side by side, and it’s only when a larger area lights up hot, directly in front of them, that Nile realizes--

“Oh shit,” Nicky laughs. “They’re in a car.”

“What?”

“Looks like we’ll have to use the front door after all,” Nile says. 

Joe perks up when he takes her meaning, and points from the phone to his delighted face and back. 

The two dots have just passed the barn, and are cornering back toward it, when the image warps and disappears. “Lost the feed,” Nicky sighs. 

Uncertainty is good. Uncertainty means there’s a chance. 

“ETA?” says Joe. 

“Twenty minutes. Take the next left.”

Joe does. “They’ll have it all buttoned up by then,” he says. 

Nile appreciates him saying it, really she does, but she’s thinking about the seven people waiting underneath the barn. “How many gas masks were there when you packed?”

He glances at her. Joe’s eyes don’t give false assurances. “Four.”

Maybe Booker brought a couple. Maybe. Nile says, “So we get down into the lab and have six more to deal with. Two on each, close quarters. They'll be trying to get the masks off us. We neutralize them, shoot Kozak, and drag Andy and Booker out.”

“Think we should torch the place?”

A bonfire would bring in _la gendarmerie_ much earlier than if they leave a quiet scene. Hours, instead of days. But if Kozak means to get all of them, she will have brought her research and old samples. “Absolutely.”

“This’ll be just like Ghent in ‘25,” Nicky says. One last attempt to lighten the mood. Joe smiles but it doesn’t take the trouble from his eyes. 

“I hope not,” Nile murmurs. It isn’t the most she’s ever done for team morale, but she doesn’t have more in her right now. _Jesus, God, please_. 

A long time passes. “Three minutes,” Nicky says. “We should be able to see it from the road.”

Nile rolls her neck to loosen her jaw and shoulders. 

They can, indeed, see it from the road. The barn is a hundred meters into a sea of unkempt grass. The blush of a tame fire flickers through gaps in the boards. 

It’s very quiet. 

They gear up at the back of the car. Nile double- and triple-checks her pack for Andy’s body armor and field kit. Nicky presses two gas masks into her hands. He and Joe secure their swords. Nile snaps open the case that holds her batons, and checks their charge. They all load rifles. 

Nile nods to Nicky, and he sets up the thermal scope. “The house is still empty. Bodies on the floor of the barn. No motion.”

“Alive?” Nile presses. 

He shrugs. “Hard to say. Body heat takes time to dissipate, and the fire confuses the scope.”

Then there’s only one thing left to do. “Let’s go.”

The door doesn’t budge when Nile tries to roll it back. Nicky gets beside her while Joe covers them, and they shift it enough to go through single file. The last pale tatters of gas float out around their ankles. Nile lights the lamp on the strap of her pack and goes in first, which is when she discovers that the thing that jammed the door was Neuberg’s head, still partially attached to her body, red hair spilling loose against the darker red pool of her blood. Her sightless flat eyes stare at Nile. 

The flies have arrived already. 

Black-clad private security are strewn across the width of the barn. It’s difficult to say how many. There are a lot of pieces. The straw has soaked up some of the blood. Between the white light of her headlamp and the flames in the back seat of the crashed car, the place looks Boschian. 

She sweeps the light up to check the corners of the barn. No cameras. Nile steps forward to make room for Joe and Nicky. 

They all pivot at the sound of a wet cough, and her lamp finds Kozak in a tangle of bodies. There’s so much blood that her coat isn’t white anymore. “You,” Kozak snarls. 

“Yeah,” Nile says. She picks her way over to Kozak. “Where’s Andy?”

Kozak makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a wheeze, and says nothing through her rictus smile. 

Nile takes a handgun off the closest guard, and shoots Kozak in the stomach. It’s moot; most of her organs are already out on the floor. Feels good, though. 

Joe is waiting where Nile knows he will be, and he takes the pistol when she offers it. He crouches before Kozak. “She said, where’s Andy?”

Eyes blazing, Kozak spits. It doesn't have much force to it; the red gob lands shy of Joe’s boots.

Joe shoots her in the throat. Before she has time to choke to death on her own blood, he gives the pistol to Nicky. 

Without a word, Nicky puts a bullet between Kozak’s eyes. 

“Fan out,” Nile says. 

She finds Booker a few paces away. Nile has, on occasion, reached the limit of how many bullets she could take for Andy in one go before she couldn’t stay upright anymore. 

It was never this many. 

Nile lets out a breath. “See you soon, Book.”

“Andy,” Nicky says, and Nile is beside him in seconds, and even as she shrugs off her pack Joe arrives and takes it from her and spreads the kit out. 

Nile gets down on her knees. Andy looks up at her, eyes clear and focused. Her left hand moves, so Nile takes it; Nicky is holding Andy’s right hand. Her grasp is strong, though slick with blood. 

“Andy. Why did you do that?” Nile asks her, but Andy watches her and doesn’t say anything. 

A gasp that Nile knows, without looking, is Booker. Then the sound of bullets falling out of him like coins from an upturned piggy bank. “Fuck,” he croaks, and then, “Andy,” and then he’s on Nile’s right, lifting Andy’s head and shoulders carefully, carefully off the ground. Nicky moves Andy’s hair out of her face, his hand coming away bloody. 

“I need the light,” Joe pleads, and with her free hand Nile aims the lamp for him. Six bullet wounds in Andy’s torso. He sterilizes the long tweezers with alcohol. “Nicolò, when I get these out you’ll have to do the stitching.” Out of all of them, his hands are steadiest. “Andromache--”

“Stop,” Andy says, in a voice so small and soft that Nile can _hear_ Joe’s heart split open in his chest. Andy takes a breath, and it rattles. “You can stop.” She pulls her hand out of Nile’s and sets it on Joe’s arm, and he stops. 

That, more than the blood, more than the irrevocable number of bullets in Andy’s body, is what tells Nile it’s over. 

Andy looks at each of them, and finally, for a long time, at Nile. Then she tilts her chin. “Pick it up.”

Nile follows her gaze. Yes, she would want to go out with the labrys in her hands. Nile gets up, legs numb, and retrieves it. She shifts to hold it beneath the gore-crusted double bit, and presents the grip to Andromache. 

Andy doesn't take it. Her mouth lifts at the corners. The last of the firelight shines in her eyes. Nile sees when it goes out. 

A little at a time, things happen around her. Nicky closes Andy’s eyes. Joe takes Andy’s hand and places it over her chest, and then he goes to the car and he brings Andy’s trenchcoat to wrap her. Booker disappears for a minute, comes back even more hollow-eyed from what he saw under the barn. He has a fresh shirt on, and a petrol can in one hand and the bouzouki case in the other. While Nile is still holding the labrys, he wipes it down with a rag. 

Finally, there isn’t anything else left to do. Nile feels them all waiting. She sets the labrys in its case and, with care, slings it on her back. Then she crouches at Andromache’s head, curls her hands in the collar of the trenchcoat, and lifts her. Nicky takes Andy’s feet. They go outside. 

By the time they have Andromache arranged across the back seat with her head and shoulders in Nile’s lap, Booker has doused the barn. It goes up with a single match. He crosses the field, clears his throat. “My, uh, car…” 

Joe glances to Nile. “Get in, Book,” he says. 

Booker lifts Andy’s legs and slides beneath them. God forbid they get pulled over tonight. 

Nicky drives. A few kilometers in, he starts to speak, barely above a whisper. “Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace.”

“Amen,” Booker responds, the short “a” coming out like a sigh. 

Joe says nothing. The tears on his cheeks reflect the glow of Nile’s phone as he unlocks it to text Copley. Maybe he’ll have something to say later, when he’s alone. 

Nile looks down at the woman she is holding, who is older than the religions of everyone in this car. 

“Nile,” Booker says. 

She remembers to breathe in. “Yeah, Book.”

“She chose this.”

Nile shuts her eyes. “She didn’t know what she was choosing.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he presses, dogged about it. “She saw you watching out for the team. That’s how she knew this was the right thing to do. She wanted it to still be your call.”

Nile looks at him. 

“Your family,” Booker says. “She didn’t want you forced into anything.”

She shuts her eyes again, leans her head back, holds on to Andy. Though she can barely admit it to herself and never would to the others, especially now that the _requiem_ is said, she is listening, and waiting. 

Big wounds take longer to heal. 

It’s the middle of the night when they arrive at a crematorium outside Nice, but a technician opens a side door. More strings pulled by Copley. Nile understands, without needing to be told, why they none of them want coffins. 

Nicky opens Nile’s door, and helps her ease Andromache’s body out. He and Joe carry her inside. 

“Whatever you do,” Booker says, watching them go, “don’t think of it as a waste. Most people don’t get to choose how they go, to make it count.” 

No. But if Nile could, she would have. If any of them--if all of them--could trade all the many centuries ahead so that Andromache could see another sunrise, they would. Or they would trade it away so Andromache could die facing a worthy opponent, cut down by a more august weapon than six bullets. How cheap their long lives feel, compared to the little time Andromache had left, and gave up. 

Joe and Nicky come back out, and there in the car, they all try to sleep. 

When Nile opens her eyes it’s a grey predawn through the fog on her window. Copley is outside in person, talking with Joe, and taking from his carry on bag a proper urn, a red-figure pelike that he must have just had on hand. If it’s genuine, and therefore priceless, it is still less than half as old as Andromache. Nile gets out of the car. 

“I feel responsible,” Copley tells her as Joe takes the urn inside. 

“Don’t,” Nile says, like it’s easy. 

“No, I think I should. I should carry my part.”

Then Nile will carry hers. 

“She was,” Copley says, and struggles for the word, “remarkable.”

Nile shivers. The morning is cold. “She was.”

Joe comes out holding the pelike’s handles in both hands. The technician brings a clipboard, and Copley signs the papers-- _Andrew Copeland_ , an effortlessly messy signature. He turns to Joe, and after a moment’s hesitation, he puts one hand on the urn, over the wood circle with its rime of beeswax that seals the mouth. Then he nods to Nile, and gets in his rental car. 

Joe holds the urn out toward her. 

It is a beautiful object. The unglazed areas of the clay depict spears and shields and horses and chitoned figures and a laurel motif. 

Nile takes the urn in her arms. Joe lets go. This is real, and permanent, and it is done. 

All the way home she holds it, and only sets it down in the footwell when Nicky parks the car. 

Inside the house that will always feel empty now, she makes four cups of coffee, taking care with the crema. She has a drink of water, and a drink of coffee. She waits for Joe to finish in the shower, and takes her turn. She goes to her room and folds clothes into a backpack. She wraps up her phone charger and her earbuds. 

She stops outside Andy’s room. She does not go in. 

She passes Booker, emptying the fridge and making himself a sandwich at the same time, on her way to the patio. She sits on the flagstones and watches the sun come up. 

She knew Andromache for five years, four months, and twenty-eight days. Less than one tenth of one percent of Andy’s life. One sixth of Nile’s, so far. 

Not long enough. Never long enough. There was so much more Andy could have taught her. 

But instead, she would have probably stared Nile down and told her _Figure it out_. And she would have had faith that Nile would. 

She is dialing her phone before she has a conscious thought about it. “Nile?” Safiye answers, pleased and worried. There is noise in the background. She must be outside, walking through the camp. 

“Hey,” Nile says. 

“Are you all right?” 

Nile swallows, with effort. “I’m just… We had a… You remember Andy?”

“Of course,” Safiye says. 

“We lost her.”

A thing that she loves about Safiye is how Safiye lets the silences breathe. “Nile,” she says at last in her lovely voice, “I’m so sorry.”

As ever, there are no adequate responses in the language of grief. Not _yeah_ , and not _thank you_ , and not _me too_. 

Nile sits, and she waits a few breaths, and she says shakily, “I might come see you sometime soon.”

“I’d like that. I’ll be waiting.”

Nile sets down her phone. The mountains are beautiful, the sky is clear, and the wind from the sea smells like uncertainty. 

Nicky comes outside. He sits down beside her, arms propped across his knees. They weep freely, silent, a shared ritual. 

When it’s run its course for now, she looks to Nicky, and he nods once, and Nile stands and offers him a hand up. He takes it. 

She does one last scan of her room and the common areas. The coffee cups are in the drying rack. They are, in clearing a safehouse as in all things, efficient. 

After considering, Nile winds the clock. 

She picks up her things and goes out the door, past the garden and through the gate. Nicky puts Nile’s backpack in the boot and closes it. Booker brings out the kitchen garbage and a bag of all their bloodsoaked clothes, and stuffs them in the bin. They’ll figure out what to do with him later. 

Joe locks the place up. When he joins Nile, the others are buckled in and she is still outside, fiddling with the GPS. 

“I don’t know,” she grumbles. She didn’t get enough coffee to be making decisions this early, if there's any point at all in planning for the future. “Just drive northeast for a while, I guess.” It feels like a good start.

“Okay, boss,” says Joe.

Nile goes very still. Joe doesn’t even blink. “I didn’t see her give the axe to Booker,” he says, and he opens the back passenger door for Nile. 

She gets in. Joe shuts the door. Beside her in the center seat, Andy’s urn is wrapped in a kevlar vest and strapped in. Booker has one hand resting on it for a little extra security. 

“Everybody good?” Nile checks, and then winces inwardly. First act as the boss: asking a question that can only be answered with a lie. 

But Nicky says, “Good,” and Booker nods, and Joe starts the car. 

Nile runs a finger over the black glaze of Andy’s urn. Here goes the antiques roadshow. But she won’t say that out loud--not for a couple days, at least. 

She’ll have to wait and see where they end up. 

**Author's Note:**

> Massive thanks to my beta @iwritesometimes for going into this first. 
> 
> Cheers for reading. I'm on Tumblr @hauntedfalcon if you want to chew me out for writing this.


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